Israel Laws are NOT Apartheid

Israeli laws are designed to assure Israel will remain a Jewish state. Non-Jews are free to go anywhere they wish and live where ever they want. Intermarriage between Jews and others is permitted. Intermarriage has always been considered unacceptable as best displayed in the play “Fiddler on the Roof”. European Jews viewed anyone marrying a non-Jews the equivalent to a death.

During most of the 20th century, South Africa was ruled by a system called Apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning ‘apartness,’ which was based on a system of racial segregation.

An Israeli human rights group has put up billboards in the occupied West Bank with a stark message for President Joe Biden, saying “this is apartheid.”

Israel was created as a Jewish State. The country was created as a homeland for Jews. Jews have experienced discrimination and in some instances faced death in almost every country in the world.

The Holocaust (6 million Jews were killed) was the seed for creating Israel. Jewish Israelis have arranged their nations laws to protect their rule over their country.

There is no other way to write this or say this reality. Israel will always be a Jewish state. If that fact changes, Israel’s purpose to exist will end.

Intimidation

Cambridge Dictionary definition. The action of frightening or threatening someone, usually in order to persuade them to do something that you want them to do.

The United States has a definition in the US code (18 USC § 1514(d)(1). It is long and complicated but does provide a legal situations.

This brings us to Russian President Vladimir Putin who is probably a great fan of “Godfather.” He wants control of Ukraine. We don’t know all of his demands. His threat is obvious.

Putin denies there is any plan to invade Ukraine. The war games Russia is conducting near the Ukrainian border is the threat and he know that. Will there be a Neville Chamberlin moment as we watch from afar?

It’s too soon to say but Putin knows that Hitler did have his way in annexing Sudetenland (a major part of the former Czechoslovakia). It was appeasement instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain’s policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Obviously it did note work. Hitler took took British surrender to Hitler’s demand to annex and expanded his control over all of Europe.

The similarities should not be ignored.

The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in American Politics

It all started for me when Richard Nixon was running for president against John F. Kennedy. Both men were saying similar words but with a twist. Years later when Nixon became president he imposed a wage and price freeze to control inflation. That was the sort of thing you would have expected from a Democrat. It made my head spin. Was that a god idea? The new car price was frozen (good idea). My next pay raise was limited to 1.5 percent (bad idea).

There really are four political major political parties in the United States. They coalesce to two every two years for congressional and presidential elections only because they can’t see a path to victory without a partner that at the very least holds some similar views. Third political party members of Congress and the Senate have been rare. Today there are two independents in the Senate (Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Angus King from Main) and two independents in the House both from Michigan (Paul Mitchell and Justin Amash a Libertarian). Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ran as an Independent write-in candidate in 2010 but has since joined the G.O.P.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is at odds with the moderate wing to the point that they oppose the currently proposed infrastructure law because they define infrastructure to include help for social services. They dream of the Green New Deal. Moderates define infrastructure as money for roads, bridges, railway and broadband services.

The battle in Ohio to fill the seat vacated by Marcia Fudge when she became the Housing and Urban Development Secretary involved 13 candidates but was seen as a contest mainly between former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Councilwoman Shontel Brown. That 11th District primary became somewhat of a replay in microcosm of the battle between Biden and Sanders to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Turner had been a national cochair for Sanders’ presidential run and often harshly criticized the eventual nominee, Biden. Brown, meanwhile, positioned herself as someone friendly to the Biden administration. Shontel Brown won that race.

Although Donald Trump is currently leading the Republican Party there is another part of the party that cling to the G.O.P.’s traditional values best personified by recent leaders Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and recently deceased Senator John McCain. It was Senator McCain who voted no to repealing Obama Care (Affordable Care Act). In the 2016 platform were the words “International trade is crucial for all sectors of America’s economy. Massive trade deficits are not. We envision a worldwide multilateral agreement among nations committed to the principles of open markets, what has been called a “Reagan Economic Zone,” in which free trade will truly be fair trade for all concerned.”

Today’s Republican party is divided between the Romney/Nixon/Eisenhower wing and the Trump wing that stands for insulating the United State from the rest of the world. Trumpians are the White nationalists who oppose everything as a gain for others thus a loss for them. This is also called Zero-sum game. They see things as If I gain you lose. If you gain I lose. We can’t both gain.

The best example of the Trump wing positions is former Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller who suggested that legal immigration is just as bad for America as illegal immigration, and the country should just shut down immigration altogether at least temporarily. Who will clean hotel rooms, pick the crops or work in meat packing factories when there are fewer of “the other” is never discussed. Those White nationalists do not understand that is has been the immigrants who have made the United States a success. Steve Job a child of Lebanese immigrants, founders of Google, Chobani yogurt founded in 2005 by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, who had bought a plant in the town of South Edmeston, New York, that was being closed by Kraft Foods. What are Trumpians in favor of doing is unclear other than blocking every idea to “Make America Great Again.” There was no Republican platform presented at the last Republican convention in August 2020.

I will be holding my nose in November 2022 as I cast my ballot.

Trump Charged with “inciting violence”

It really does not make any difference what anyone says about the incitement on January 6. Most Republican senators are not going to vote a guilty verdict. The comments that the Republican Party is now the Trump Party appears accurate. Trump’s inexplicable hold over the GOP is almost 100%.

But just for the discussion what is incitement, exactly? The dictionary definition of “incite,” according to Merriam-Webster, is simple: “to move to action : stir up : spur on : urge on.” Trump clearly did that, when he directed his supporters to march toward Capitol Hill from a rally held under the “Stop the Steal” banner.

But there’s a much more detailed definition in US law, which is:

“…the term ‘to incite a riot’, or ‘to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot”, includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts.”

Federal courts said Trump did not incite a mob back in 2016 when he told supporters to turn on protesters, who later sued the President.

The New York Times has a thorough examination of how courts have looked upon “incitement.” Read that here.

The history of “incitement”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, the First Amendment-protecting Supreme Court justice who pushed the idea that a person can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, built the “clear and present danger” test for speech. He argued Congress could only regulate speech when it represented a “present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about.”

More recently, the Supreme Court has protected all sorts of speech, like flag burning, crude political hyperbole and, importantly in this instance is Brandenburg v. Ohio, which allows advocating crime as long as it doesn’t incite imminent lawlessness.

Trump’s legal team repeatedly cited that case in a legal brief laying out their free speech-focused defense.

Most of this information is from CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf

The Meaning of “Fight like Hell”

Donald Trump exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” before they swarmed the Capitol on January 6. What did Trump mean? A quote from his speech that day: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

It appears the rioters chose to hear “fight like hell” over “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Although we are just more than a month into the 117th Congress, Richard Shelby is the fourth GOP senator to say he won’t run for reelection — joining Sens. Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Rob Portman (Ohio) on the sidelines. (By contrast, no Democratic senators have announced their retirement at this point.)

With the exception of Shelby who is 86 years old. Toomey is 59 years old. Burr is 65 years old. Portman is 65 years old. Those three are relatively young senators. The average age of senators is 63.

So with the exception of Shelby what is the motivation for their decision not to run for re-election?

If all four of these men vote “not guilty” in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump they have decided to move on to other interests than serving in the senate.

Which take precedent? Political party or defending the constitution?

Arcane – The Filibuster

The filibuster is Unfathomable, and Obscure. It is complicated and therefore understood or known by only a few people.

Filibuster is a tactic used in the United States Senate to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote by means of obstruction. The most common form occurs when one or more senators attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on the measure.

The Senate can overcome a filibuster if it invokes cloture — a vote by 60 members of the Senate to place a 30-hour time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter.

Cloture, adopted as Rule 22 in 1917, used to require a two-thirds majority vote. However, due to the difficulty of obtaining a two-thirds vote, the Senate changed the rule in 1975 and reduced the number of votes required to three-fifths (or 60).

In 2005 Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to use the nuclear option to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush. And in July 2013, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened its use to stop Republicans from filibustering President Barack Obama’s executive-branch nominees.

Senators have never successfully made good on their threat to invoke the nuclear option and bring an end to the filibuster, but if they did, it could have huge consequences for the future of the Senate and the ability to keep the majority in check.

In November 2013, Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid used the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell extended the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominations in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.^[2]^[3]^{McConnell loves the filibuster when it suits his purpose.}

Filibuster is called respect for the minority. And this is called democracy in America.